December 15, 2011

Stanton A. Glantz, PhD

Judge Kessler signs the order improving document access; thanks to all

Judge Gladys Kessler has signed the consent order that the US Department of Justice and the public health intervenors (Tobacco-Free Kids Action Fund, American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, and National African-American Tobacco Prevention Network) negotiated with Altria/Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds that will improve indexing and access to the tobacco industry documents available on the UCSF  Legacy Tobacco Documents Library.  This order details how the documents are to be indexed (a nerdy, but very important detail) and specifies that the companies will pay the Court $6.25 million, which the Court will provide to UCSF to continue to collect and improve access to the documents.

There are several people who deserve thanks for this major accomplishment.

Kim Klausner, the librarian who manages LTDL spent months working with the DOJ and intervenors' lawyers on the details of how the documents needed to be indexed to maximize their utility and coordinated responses to a myriad of technical details in the proposals and counter-proposals.  Thanks to her tireless attention to detail the order includes strong and comprehensive indexing standards that will make relevant documents easier to find.

Karen Butter, the University Librarian (and Kim's boss) continued to provide quality oversight and management of the process.  Thanks to her judgment and skill, the UCSF Library has done much more with the LTDL than most thought possible given the available resources.

Marcia Canning, UCSF's in-house counsel, did a great job of working with the DOJ lawyers and UCSF administration to see that the order was structured in a way that allowed UCSF to accept the money.

Elizabeth Fernandez of our News Services department worked with us an DOJ to convert the press statement we drafted working with DOJ from a statement that "sounded like it was written by a committee of professors and lawyers" to something that made sense to regular people ... but still got all the legal nuances correct.

Daniel Crane-Hirsch and Josh Burke were the DOJ trial lawyers who actually did the negotiating.  They helped us understand the rules surrounding the negotiations and were exceptionally sensitive to the issues we raised.

Howard Crystal, lawyer for  the public health intervenors was also highly attuned to the need to the issues we raised.

Thanks to all.  I am confident that the collection will continue to grow and be ever more useful.

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